JVP in NPP’s clothing

Tuesday 30th April, 2024

The JVP-led NPP has come under an avalanche of criticism for a claim made by Nalin Hewage, one of its stalwarts, in a recent television debate, that the victims of the JVP’s reign of terror in the late 1980s were anti-social elements such as rapists, robbers, bootleggers and cattle rustlers. A protest was held near the JVP headquarters, Battaramulla, yesterday, against that controversial claim.

Hewage’s assertion runs counter to JVP/NPP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s recent statement, in Canada, to the effect that he was sorry for the JVP’s violence in the late 1980s. One wonders whether the JVP is remorseful for its terrorism (1987-89) or divided on that score, with the party’s ultra-radical core remaining unremorseful. Is the JVP in the NPP alliance trapped in what may be called the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde duality? Other political parties planning to contest the upcoming presidential election are out for the JVP’s blood, so to speak, the prominent among being the SJB, the UNP and the SLPP.

The UNP has condemned the JVP for the latter’s mindless violence in the late 1980s. It seems to think the people have forgotten its own Caravan of Death, which left thousands of youth dead. It ran many torture chambers, massacred suspects and buried them in mass graves or burnt them on tyre-pyres on the roadside by way of a warning to others. Most of all, the country would not have been plunged into a bloodbath if the UNP had not falsely accused the JVP of complicity in the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom and proscribed it. Perhaps, the UNP destroyed more lives than the JVP did during the 1987-89 period. Worse, the UNP, had no qualms about enlisting the JVP’s support to retain its hold on Parliament after falling out with President Maithripala Sirisena in 2018. The ‘Marxist’ JVP unashamedly propped up the beleaguered ‘capitalist’ UNP administration! The SJB leaders were in the UNP government, which benefited from the JVP’s backing. They did not make an issue of the JVP’s ugly past then.

The SLPP is also without a moral right to condemn the JVP for its past violence. Its leader Mahinda Rajapaksa would not have won the 2005 presidential election but for the JVP’s support. It was the JVP which led his propaganda campaign to all intents and purposes and made his victory possible.

The JVP is playing the victim card to gain public sympathy. It says it has become a target of the political elites in the SLPP, the UNP, the SJB, the SLFP, etc., They, it says, have banded together, shedding their differences, to suppress it. This claim is not without a modicum of truth. The leaders of the political parties opposed to the JVP co-operate to safeguard their interests, and that is why none of their leaders have been incarcerated for their crimes despite regime changes. But one disagrees with the JVP on the Marxist markers used in identifying elites. Going along with Vilfredo Pareto’s theory of elites instead, one may argue that the JVP leaders cannot be excluded from the political elites. Examining the structure and change of elites, Pareto has convincingly argued that elites and non-elites are not stable and new elites rise and oust othe old ones, and this change is called the circulation of elites, which has not spared the JVP. Besides, the JVP has earned notoriety for political promiscuity. It has honeymooned with the parties it describes as elitist. In 1970, it backed the SLFP-led United Front, and turned against the newly-formed government the following year. In the late 1970s, it got close to the UNP, whose government released its leaders from prison. Later, it turned on the UNP and met its Waterloo in 1989. In 1994, it backed the SLFP led by Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, and subsequently fell out with it. In 2004, it coalesced with the SLFP and had representation in the UPFA Cabinet. The following year it enabled Mahinda to realise his presidential dream. It took on Mahinda later on. In 2015, it honeymooned with the UNP again for about five years. Now, it is on a campaign to vilify the UNP and its leader Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Fear being expressed in some quarters that the JVP is likely to revert to its old ways and suppress political dissent ruthlessly the way it does in universities is not unfounded. Its role in the 2022 protests, especially the abortive march on Parliament, has fuelled the fear that it has not bid farewell to extra-parliamentary methods to capture state power.

The JVP would have the public believe that winning the next presidential election will be a walk in the park for it, but reality is otherwise. It has its work cut out to allay fears in the minds of the public. Having made a colossal blunder at the last presidential election, the people are not likely to vote blindly for any political party or person again. The least the JVP can do to gain public confidence is to tender an unqualified apology for its past crimes and publicly abandon its outdated ideology.